Aims 1 To understand what map projects are

Aims: 1) To understand what map projects are 2) To use latitude and longitude to find locations on the earth Think: how do we make a map of the Earth on a flat piece of paper when its is a round sphere ?

Map Projections Cartographers (map makers) can’t make a round 3 D object like a globe fit on to a flat 2 D surface, such as piece of paper with out distorting some aspect of the 3 D object. So every map of the Earth that you see on a piece in a book or on a computer screen has something wrong with it. Different types of maps of the Earth with different distortions are called map projections.

This is probably the map of the Earth you are most use to its call a Mercator projection. It has become common because it has features which allow people to use it for navigation. However, it has been criticised for having a European bias, as places where Europeans live, such as Europe and North America look bigger then they are in real life. This is Gall-Peters projection, this map is not suitable for navigation but it tries to represent the area (size) of the land masses accurately. On this map places in the northern hemisphere such as Europe and North America are shown in true size and appear much smaller and places such as South America, Africa and Australia all look much larger.

Other types of map projections

Map Centric The part of the world that is Centred on a map can tell us about where the map is made. European maps tend to be centred on Europe and Africa. Where as American maps tend to be centred on North and South America. In Australia we tend to centre maps on the Pacific Ocean.